The Gavin Letters - Part 2

Loom Feedback: Feedback on Copywriting Skills and Improvement Strategies Essay Feedback: I’ve gone through the copy you sent over, and I’m giving it a 5.5 out of 10. We’re starting to see a flicker of light at the end of a very long, very dark tunnel, but we are nowhere near where we need to be. I’m not just here to pat you on the back. I’m here to make you a writer who doesn’t get laughed out of the room. I showed your copy to a client—just to give them a sense of where you’re at—and they literally asked me, “Does he even speak English as his first language?” Your writing appears to be written by someone who doesn’t grasp the basic structure of the language. A few reasons I’ve identified that contribute to this: 1. Your Formatting is Atrocious First things first, what the hell is going on with your formatting? You’re breaking paragraphs in the middle of a thought, starting new lines for no reason. It looks like this. “You know how to make money, you know how to provide for your family and you were raised in a system…” What is that? Are you writing a poem? This isn’t a dissertation, and it’s not creative writing class. It’s COPY!!! Copy is meant to be read easily. It flows. It’s one complete sentence, then another. Maybe two in a paragraph. Three to four lines, max. Your formatting is a nightmare for anyone trying to read it, especially off a teleprompter. 2. You Sound Like a Glitching Robot I can tell you transcribed this from audio, which is better than your normal writing, but you are not editing your work to make it make sense. It’s littered with filler words, verbal tics, and repetitions that make it sound odd. The most glaring example? “Brother.” I did a quick search. You said “brother” 12 times. At one point, you literally said, “and brother, but brother.” You don’t want a word to repeat itself on a page. You’re also still using parentheses for no reason. Stop that lol. You’re also repeating entire phrases for emphasis, but it just sounds like you’re stalling. For example: “Brother, many men have the same experience. Many men are in your exact situation, and many men have made it out. That’s the hopeful message from this. Many men have made it out.” We get it. Many men have made it out. Say it once, make it count, and move on. Every word should have a purpose. If it doesn’t, cut it. 3. Your Logic is a MAZE! This is the biggest problem. Your ideas are completely disconnected. You’re not leading the reader down a logical path; you’re dragging them through a swamp of unrelated thoughts. You go from Point A to Point F, then jump to Point Z, and then back to the at-symbol. It’s chaos. I spend the majority of my feedback video to you explaining this. Your Homework Here’s what I want you to work on this week. Your main problem right now isn’t structure, hooks, or formatting—it’s flow. The ideas in your writing don’t connect. They jump around and don’t sound like how people actually talk. It feels like someone trying to write, not someone trying to communicate. So here’s the exercise. I want you to take three Gary Halbert newsletters and hand-copy them. Word for word. Get a notebook and a pen. Don’t type. Don’t summarize. Don’t skim. You’re going to write every single word, line by line, exactly as he wrote it. This is going to feel slow and repetitive, but that’s the point. You’re forcing your brain to move at the pace of a master copywriter. You’ll start noticing things you normally miss—the rhythm, the tone, the transitions, the way he moves from one idea to the next without breaking the reader’s attention. When you’re done with each newsletter, record a short voice memo. In it, tell me what you noticed. What patterns stood out? How did he bridge one thought to another? Where did he change tone? How did he reset your attention? What parts felt like real conversation versus formal writing? Don’t give me a summary—give me your observations. I want to hear your thoughts while you’re realizing them. Send me: 1. Photos of your handwritten copies (so I know you actually did it). 2. The voice memos for each letter. This will train your internal rhythm. Flow isn’t something you learn from frameworks—it’s something you absorb by repetition and observation. Here are the newsletters: Newsletter 1 Newsletter 2 Newsletter 3